WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
A ROYAL PAIN-ENBAUM
How many of you are familiar with the Actor Gene Hackman? He has made a wonderful living in so many great movies. He was Lex Luthor in the Superman films with Christopher Reeve. He won an Oscar for his role as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection. The other Oscar he won was for his portrayal of Little Bill Daggett the evil sheriff in Clint Eastwood’s Western “Unforgiven.” He was in Bonnie and Clyde, The Poseidon Adventure, and Mississippi Burning.
One of his lesser-known films was a comedy-drama in 2001 called The Royal Tenenbaums. It stars Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, and Luke and Owen Wilson.
Gene Hackman plays the title character, an abrasive patriarch who tries to win back his family’s love by telling them he’s dying. Critics called it one of Hackman’s greatest performances. But for year, the actor would rarely discuss making the film. And a decade later, we find out why.
Despite many rumors of friction on the set, Hackman’s costars avoided talking about him. They would use the typical, “It was an honor to work with him” line. But at the 10th anniversary screening attended by some of the stars, but not Hackman, they started to confess: “We were scared of him.” Anjelica Huston revealed that during one tense exchange, she was afraid for one of the director’s safety with him.
Bill Murray chimed in: “I’ll stick up for Gene. I’d hear these stories like, ‘Gene threatened to kill me today!’ He can’t kill you, you’re in a union. ‘Gene threatened to take all of us and set fire to us.’ It’s a union shoot, it’s New York, he can’t set fire to you!” Joking that Gene HAD threatened people but couldn’t really follow through as only Bill Murray could do it.
Gwyneth Paltrow was a little more diplomatic: “To be in his presence and watch him do his thing. It’s like—you know, you’re Gene Hackman, you can be in a bad mood.”
The Royal Tenenbaums wasn’t quite Hackman’s last movie—he did three more before retiring. When an interviewer asked him in 2011 if he’d ever consider taking on one more film, Hackman answered, “If I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything, and just one or two people.”
For Hackman, he might have been difficult to work with, but people didn’t want to be away from him. They admired his work. His work ethic. His acting performances. The professionalism of how quickly he could do a scene. For those around him, they did their best to keep up with him and were as gracious to him as they could be.
They weren’t married to Gene. But they did what they could to get along with him.
Today, we are going to talk about marriage and divorce. How do we take a relationship deeper and more meaningful than a mere working relationship. A mere acting relationship. What is God’s plan for marriage?
How do we define marriage? This question is at the heart of a moral revolution in our culture. For thousands of years, civilizations have defined marriage as an exclusive, permanent union between one man and one woman. Just two decades ago politicians in our country voted across party lines to defend this definition of marriage in what was called the Defense of Marriage Act. But in June 2013 the Supreme Court of the United States struck down key provisions of that Act, making way for the complete redefinition of marriage.
In the days that followed, states began officially defining marriage according to different terms, now allowing same-sex relationships to be classified as marriage. These state decisions were confirmed in 2015, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all states.
Now holding up the previous definitions is seen as bigotry.
According to United States v. Windsor this aspect of marriage that “had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history.” Now, holding the traditional marriage view makes that person “enemies of the human race.”
This trend away from traditional marriage across our culture has taken place over many years and goes deeper than just same-sex marriage. Census figures project that nearly half of all first marriages will end in divorce. And that is if men and women even decide to marry. The number of couples living together before marriage has nearly quadrupled over the last thirty years as more and more singles postpone or even put aside marriage altogether.
Life-long marriage between a man and a woman is on the decline. Fewer than half of all American households today are made up of married couples. All of these realities need to cause us to look seriously at our society and what marriage means from a Godly perspective.
Marriage is an institution that was ordained to be consistent through all time.
In our passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks to his audience about marriage. Let’s read it together:
MATTHEW 5:31-32
31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
We are in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and in the middle of a section that many scholars call the Six Antitheses. This is a section where Jesus begins with the phrase “You have heard it was said.” These statements are made because they had heard these things from their Law about how to live a Godly life. The Jewish people of this time would know this statement from Deuteronomy 24.
DEUTERONOMY 24:1
“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house…”
By the time of Jesus, two rabbinic schools dominated the discussion of this passage about divorce. The school of Shammai taught that sexual sin was the only permissible reason to end a marriage by divorce. The school of Hillel argued that anything a wife did that displeased her husband provided valid grounds for divorce. Hillel’s position would become the dominant view and this is how permissive divorce became at this time:
By the time of the composition of the Mishnah (200 ad), most rabbis seem to have embraced the view of Hillel. The Mishnah was the first written collection of the Jewish oral tradition and it specified numerous and ridiculous grounds for divorce that made the covenant of marriage meaningless.
The Mishnah stated that a man could divorce his wife if she were barren and unable to have children. If she became a deaf mute, or if she had epilepsy, tetanus, warts, or leprosy. It insisted that a man could divorce his wife if she failed to perform certain services in the home or if her husband considered her lazy.
Rabbinic law also stated that if certain physical defects in his wife were offensive to him, he could divorce her. The law stated if she had a head that was wedge shaped, turnip shaped, or hammer shaped, or if her head was otherwise malformed such as “sunk in” or “flat in the back.” If she had poor posture or thinning hair. He could divorce her if she had no eyebrows, only one eyebrow, or if the eyebrows were too bushy. If she had a pug nose. If her eyes were too high or too low, if she were cross-eyed, had no eyelashes, had eyes of two different colors, watery eyes, or eyes as big as a calf or small like a goose. The man could divorce his wife if her nose were too big or too little, her ears too little or too floppy, if she had an overbite or an underbite, missing teeth, a poor figure, a swollen belly, a protruding navel, a dark complexion, boney ankles or knees, swollen feet, if she were bowlegged, if she suffered swelling of the big toe, if her heel had protrusions, if the sole of her foot was as wide as that of a goose, or if she were ambidextrous!
If she ate something that was forbidden to her to eat, if she visited her parents at their home, or if against her husband’s wishes, the in-laws moved into the same city to be closer to their daughter.
If she broke the laws of Moses or if she transgressed Jewish customs by going outdoors with her hair unbound, spun cloth in the street, or spoke to another man other than her husband. A man could divorce his wife if she had a bad reputation, if she burned supper, or if he simply found someone prettier. Wow! How many of us feel self-conscious right now? Someone is hiding their ears right now. Someone else is thinking about their boney knees…
We won’t get into the sexual satisfaction laws that were given. It’s too graphic.
But we might find such a worldview to be comical, laughable. We aren’t perfect people, and we all have physical flaws and character traits that might make us seem very undesirable. But when we think about divorce laws today, we aren’t any better. In fact, I would venture to say we are even more lenient. We don’t need a reason at all to end a marriage in 2023. We call it “no-fault divorce.” Jesus in Matthew 5, clearly and forcefully condemns the idea of frivolous divorce that was gaining popularity in his day. Marriage is a sacred, divine, and ordained institution given as a gift by a great God. We dare not mess with it.
According to Jesus in this passage, sexual immorality gives one permission to divorce a spouse. Nothing in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation mandates a divorce. God never places divorce as the first or preferred option, and that is the message that Jesus is getting at here in Matthew 5.
God desires that there be healing in a marriage. Our God is a God of reconciliation. He would always prefer that partners in even the most troubled marriages pursue reconciliation and restoration.
I CORINTHIANS 7:10-11
10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.
In our fallen world, genuine reconciliation will not always take place. But this does not negate the fact that reconciliation is God’s perfect will and desire. Through the gospel, God delights in putting broken lives back together. Through the gospel, God delights in putting broken marriages and homes back together too.
None of us is capable of going back in time and undoing our past. No doubt all of us immediately would do so and change something or things if we could. But we can’t. We have to live in the now and deal with life in the present. I want to be clear, truthful, biblical, yet very empathetic this morning. I know many have dealt with this in their lives and I care about you and love you no matter your marital state.
Divorce on unbiblical grounds is sin. However, our God is a gracious and forgiving God who immediately and fully forgives confessed sin. We all have the opportunity at any moment to begin afresh and observe God’s standards by remaining faithful with our current partner.
Be a faithful spouse today and in the future. Commit daily to lifelong faithfulness and fidelity. Model today the difference the gospel makes in a marriage. Do not excuse your past sin and failures. Acknowledge them, confess them, repent of them, and then move forward in the grace and forgiveness and mercy of God, doing the right thing to everyone!
In our culture divorce may be the norm, but it must never be the norm in our churches. As a community of new covenant believers who have received a new heart through the gospel, we possess the indwelt Holy Spirit and He gives us the power to remain faithful and to honor our spouses. It shows a new life in Christ that now characterizes our lives.
Furthermore, it is the spiritual implementation of our living out the beatitudes that we had lessons about at the beginning of this year.
It is also the living out and representing of the Fruit of the Spirit and we should see these characteristics in our lives.
GALATIANS 5:22-24
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
John Chrysostom was an early church preacher. He once said,
“For he who is meek, and a peacemaker, and poor in spirit, and merciful, how shall he cast out his wife?”
As repenting sinners, who daily seek our Savior’s forgiveness, we gladly extend the same forgiveness to our spouses. As those who have been reconciled to God, we continually pursue reconciliation, not divorce, as we live together in marriage. This is our Lord’s command. This is his will. This is our daily and lifelong pursuit.
CONCLUSION
Marriage is not a fairy tale. It is hard work. I recognize that some have had very difficult marriages that were irreconcilable. I empathize with you. I do not judge. Marriage is work that needs a husband and a wife to say from the beginning, “Divorce is not an option. We will stay true and faithful even in the tough times, especially in the tough times.
It would be easy to make this topic another one that “We don’t talk about.” “We don’t talk about that!” But Jesus didn’t ignore it. Neither should we.
INVITATION
